What's the deal with Slashdot still using that Bill Gates Borg icon to represent Microsoft? That icon is so dated on both levels these days. Bill Gates hasn't worked at Microsoft in years, and the Borg reference just is no longer current or relevant.
Methinks the Borg reference will be more relevant in the future than it has ever been. As for Bill working in Microsoft, some of the issues many people have had in the past with MSFT were related to money Bill Gates made from work other people did.
Nope. You're on the right track, but looking at it the wrong way. We can make rough estimates of how far away something is based on how far away it appears to be, what relative velocity/acceleration it appears to have, etc. So something that appears to be 11Mly away could be 20Mly distant.
Nuclear weapons are shiny, yes, but you'll find that America has made far much more impressive use of mundane chemically based weapons. I wouldn't go citing the use of atomics as proof of anything really. At the end of the day, body count matters more than method.
I would assume too that, in the long run, adult stem cell research will be of more value for providing compatible stem cells for whetever fix is needed by a body.
I wonder how true that really is. The russians had (and still have) a far larger capacity to damage the US. I find it hard to believe they had the same willingness though: communism is, after all, a utopian ideal. It will probably come about eventually in some form globally, but only when we have built an easily maintained production infrastructure (which of course can be best achieved through capitalism. Ironic eh? We have already achieved a level in the western world where people, if they tried to, could feed themselves easily every day for less than 15 minutes pay. We're just too lazy. ) Militant Islam however is all about "Death to the infidels!"
Awww give the guy a break. It's an awesome picture, and requires very little effort to find and zoom into a particular patch of the sky. It isn't a space flight sim.
Science answers the "how". It rarely bothers with the "why". That's where the Church has lots of room, because most people would love to know "why", and that's something science will likely never answer.
Most people I know would be horrified at the thought of a "why". Free will is a hollow thing indeed if its just a manifestation of somebody's plan.
I would like to see you explain evolution to humans 4000 years ago when they have no idea about genes.
You might be surprised. The folks back then are the people who selectively bred our livestock, larger varieties of fruits like apples, pears, strawberries, grains like oats, barley, wheat, rice, breeds of dogs suited to different purposes..... Are you saying they might find the idea of inherited traits difficult to grasp?
That is actually a bit of a myth. The pope had a problem with Galileo, but that was because of the way he framed his theory, in the way of a story, using the name of the pope as one of the villains. If he had resisted poking fun at the most powerful man around he would have been fine.
I went to a religious school too, and had all sorts of fun in science classes. We did many experiments, a few of which the teachers even approved. The rest involved bunsen burners, and shoving various things into them, from mercury thermometers by some people, to tightly wrapped balls of magnesium wire for the more imaginative, or those less inclined towards inhaling mercury fumes. It was educational, but nowhere near as much fun as religion classes. Religion was the only class I ever got thrown out of, by a RC priest looking like he was about to pop several blood vessels in his face while screaming at me that I was the most cynical person he had ever met. I didn't really mind being kicked out, despite the hilarity of the class, as I got to do my maths homework due after lunch that I was too tired for after the football match the previous evening:D
Thats not really the best indicator of the value of their opinions though. Lots of people have enormous expertise in various fields without ever having written about it. A lot of people write about things they know little about. My father never wrote much beyond signing cheques his entire life; that doesn't mean some academic who wrote about such things would know more about how real men did an honest days labour in agriculture or construction in the 60s-80s. I would still take his opinion or those of men like him more seriously than those of people who know less about that particular subject. The same thing goes with the first article; it says absolutely nothing about the substance of the evidence that various "experts" might give in court; it outright says that more weight should be given to certain arguements that are presented as scientific in nature, merely because more people have said the same thing. And in the particular fuzzy subject in case, even if those arguements are peer reviewed, what is that supposed to mean? The topic in question does not have an accepted answer. Peer review is going to boil down to either agreeing or disagreeing with the person's findings.
I saw an essay once by a anthropologist who made the claim that video games and sports do not increase violence. His argument in a nutshell was the humans like all mammals have a very deep seated sense of play vs serious business
I can tell you authoritatively that guy in an idiot.
Most professional athletes got where they are specifically because their play is a "serious business." There are many a player who have no problem breaking your arm so they can make that catch. In many cases, these people go on to become sports stars, successful businessmen, or serial killers.
I agree. Let us ban professional sports throughout the globe, and usher in a new age of world peace.
You don't generally watch Top Gear for information, as the vast majority of cars that get time on there are well beyond what >99% of drivers can ever reasonably expect to purchase in their lifetime..
What about the 1%? Those people who have the money. Seems to me they would probably be more the type who (unlike me) would actually watch the program, and have their buying choices influenced by it.
I was thinking exactly the same thing myself. Recycleable plastics made from plants, sure. Sounds good. Rots when left lying about.... if we're talking multiple decades, again, sure. If we're talking less than 3-4 times the expected lifetime of the manufactured item, no.
Packing people into densities far beyond the capacity to support them is *sooooo* green.
Yes it is. People can be packed into high densities per unit land area by building UP. The capacity to support people is provided by farmland, which cannot be built in multiple layers; the area of farmland you need is more or less dictated by the size of the population you are supporting. So making intensive use of land where possible, ie. for housing and business, frees up more land to be left wild. This is a good thing for the environment.
If you tax oil generally, instead of just "road fuel", then electric cars will still be paying their share. Unless of course the electricity is being generated from something other than imported oil... which is a win for the national economy.
This idea will always change over time, but patents have always boiled down to be about people not profiting from someone else's work. An extreme historical example of litigation against an "infringer" (of copyright, not patent, but they are similar and neither was really applicable in this example) would be St. Columbkille, who, in the 6th century in Ireland, was forced to hand over a copy of a book he had made to the owner of the book. The book in question was the christian bible, or portions thereof, with various commentaries included, and exquisite illustrations and caligraphy. The judge, some local chieftan, decreed "To every cow her calf, to every book its copy", totally ignoring the phenomenal amount of work he had put into copying a work, for no profit, that was by todays standards public domain, in a world with no IP laws.
I have no problem with people being rewarded for their work, but we have been trying for well over a thousand years to find the correct balance and have not yet got it right. That may be because it has not been an issue outside academia until recently, but it is not promising when they have not sorted it out for a thousand years and the greed merchants are dealing with the issue now.
Yes but this is a fundamentally flawed approach. Patents are assigned to new ways of applying applying human knowledge, to promote research and to advance science. If something is potentially unethical, but patentable, patents should be granted and laws made to deny application of said knowledge to areas we deem unpalatable.
I'm sure the point that the AC was making, is that patents are about making inventions that further human knowledge/ability. Application of knowledge and power should always be subject to ethical review, but knowledge itself should not be.
Slashdot Mirror
Thankyou. Good read.
>
seriously though. These guys are what, 104 year old Germans?
Indeed. Because England's population 70 years ago was made up completely of Germans over the age of 34.
What's the deal with Slashdot still using that Bill Gates Borg icon to represent Microsoft? That icon is so dated on both levels these days. Bill Gates hasn't worked at Microsoft in years, and the Borg reference just is no longer current or relevant.
Methinks the Borg reference will be more relevant in the future than it has ever been. As for Bill working in Microsoft, some of the issues many people have had in the past with MSFT were related to money Bill Gates made from work other people did.
Thanks for that. Neither is the kind of thing I'd really listen to, more of a hard rock/metal type guy but I really enjoyed those.
Nope. You're on the right track, but looking at it the wrong way. We can make rough estimates of how far away something is based on how far away it appears to be, what relative velocity/acceleration it appears to have, etc. So something that appears to be 11Mly away could be 20Mly distant.
Nuclear weapons are shiny, yes, but you'll find that America has made far much more impressive use of mundane chemically based weapons. I wouldn't go citing the use of atomics as proof of anything really. At the end of the day, body count matters more than method.
I would assume too that, in the long run, adult stem cell research will be of more value for providing compatible stem cells for whetever fix is needed by a body.
I wonder how true that really is. The russians had (and still have) a far larger capacity to damage the US. I find it hard to believe they had the same willingness though: communism is, after all, a utopian ideal. It will probably come about eventually in some form globally, but only when we have built an easily maintained production infrastructure (which of course can be best achieved through capitalism. Ironic eh? We have already achieved a level in the western world where people, if they tried to, could feed themselves easily every day for less than 15 minutes pay. We're just too lazy. ) Militant Islam however is all about "Death to the infidels!"
Maybe I'm just an oldthinker who unbellyfeels newspeak
Fatal exception: one or more words caused minor explosions at location CRANIUM. Please reinstall English Lexicon and reboot America.
Awww give the guy a break. It's an awesome picture, and requires very little effort to find and zoom into a particular patch of the sky. It isn't a space flight sim.
Science answers the "how". It rarely bothers with the "why". That's where the Church has lots of room, because most people would love to know "why", and that's something science will likely never answer.
Most people I know would be horrified at the thought of a "why". Free will is a hollow thing indeed if its just a manifestation of somebody's plan.
I would like to see you explain evolution to humans 4000 years ago when they have no idea about genes.
You might be surprised. The folks back then are the people who selectively bred our livestock, larger varieties of fruits like apples, pears, strawberries, grains like oats, barley, wheat, rice, breeds of dogs suited to different purposes..... Are you saying they might find the idea of inherited traits difficult to grasp?
That is actually a bit of a myth. The pope had a problem with Galileo, but that was because of the way he framed his theory, in the way of a story, using the name of the pope as one of the villains. If he had resisted poking fun at the most powerful man around he would have been fine.
Thats a study of religion. Most religious people don't want their beliefs scrutinized, they want more people to agree with them.
I went to a religious school too, and had all sorts of fun in science classes. We did many experiments, a few of which the teachers even approved. The rest involved bunsen burners, and shoving various things into them, from mercury thermometers by some people, to tightly wrapped balls of magnesium wire for the more imaginative, or those less inclined towards inhaling mercury fumes. It was educational, but nowhere near as much fun as religion classes. Religion was the only class I ever got thrown out of, by a RC priest looking like he was about to pop several blood vessels in his face while screaming at me that I was the most cynical person he had ever met. I didn't really mind being kicked out, despite the hilarity of the class, as I got to do my maths homework due after lunch that I was too tired for after the football match the previous evening :D
Thats not really the best indicator of the value of their opinions though. Lots of people have enormous expertise in various fields without ever having written about it. A lot of people write about things they know little about. My father never wrote much beyond signing cheques his entire life; that doesn't mean some academic who wrote about such things would know more about how real men did an honest days labour in agriculture or construction in the 60s-80s. I would still take his opinion or those of men like him more seriously than those of people who know less about that particular subject. The same thing goes with the first article; it says absolutely nothing about the substance of the evidence that various "experts" might give in court; it outright says that more weight should be given to certain arguements that are presented as scientific in nature, merely because more people have said the same thing. And in the particular fuzzy subject in case, even if those arguements are peer reviewed, what is that supposed to mean? The topic in question does not have an accepted answer. Peer review is going to boil down to either agreeing or disagreeing with the person's findings.
I saw an essay once by a anthropologist who made the claim that video games and sports do not increase violence. His argument in a nutshell was the humans like all mammals have a very deep seated sense of play vs serious business
I can tell you authoritatively that guy in an idiot.
Most professional athletes got where they are specifically because their play is a "serious business." There are many a player who have no problem breaking your arm so they can make that catch. In many cases, these people go on to become sports stars, successful businessmen, or serial killers.
I agree. Let us ban professional sports throughout the globe, and usher in a new age of world peace.
You don't generally watch Top Gear for information, as the vast majority of cars that get time on there are well beyond what >99% of drivers can ever reasonably expect to purchase in their lifetime..
What about the 1%? Those people who have the money. Seems to me they would probably be more the type who (unlike me) would actually watch the program, and have their buying choices influenced by it.
I was thinking exactly the same thing myself. Recycleable plastics made from plants, sure. Sounds good. Rots when left lying about.... if we're talking multiple decades, again, sure. If we're talking less than 3-4 times the expected lifetime of the manufactured item, no.
Packing people into densities far beyond the capacity to support them is *sooooo* green.
Yes it is. People can be packed into high densities per unit land area by building UP. The capacity to support people is provided by farmland, which cannot be built in multiple layers; the area of farmland you need is more or less dictated by the size of the population you are supporting. So making intensive use of land where possible, ie. for housing and business, frees up more land to be left wild. This is a good thing for the environment.
If you tax oil generally, instead of just "road fuel", then electric cars will still be paying their share. Unless of course the electricity is being generated from something other than imported oil... which is a win for the national economy.
This idea will always change over time, but patents have always boiled down to be about people not profiting from someone else's work. An extreme historical example of litigation against an "infringer" (of copyright, not patent, but they are similar and neither was really applicable in this example) would be St. Columbkille, who, in the 6th century in Ireland, was forced to hand over a copy of a book he had made to the owner of the book. The book in question was the christian bible, or portions thereof, with various commentaries included, and exquisite illustrations and caligraphy. The judge, some local chieftan, decreed "To every cow her calf, to every book its copy", totally ignoring the phenomenal amount of work he had put into copying a work, for no profit, that was by todays standards public domain, in a world with no IP laws.
I have no problem with people being rewarded for their work, but we have been trying for well over a thousand years to find the correct balance and have not yet got it right. That may be because it has not been an issue outside academia until recently, but it is not promising when they have not sorted it out for a thousand years and the greed merchants are dealing with the issue now.
Yes but this is a fundamentally flawed approach. Patents are assigned to new ways of applying applying human knowledge, to promote research and to advance science. If something is potentially unethical, but patentable, patents should be granted and laws made to deny application of said knowledge to areas we deem unpalatable.
I'm sure the point that the AC was making, is that patents are about making inventions that further human knowledge/ability. Application of knowledge and power should always be subject to ethical review, but knowledge itself should not be.
Interesting point. If guns were invented today we'd have patents around a new way to kill someone. Morals/ethics would not come into it.